Selling my Apple side projects

Some pre-spring cleaning

March, 2018

That’s right. I sold all of my side projects related to Apple that I’ve worked on in the past 3 years or so (and also some non-Apple Open Source).

I used Transferslot for it, and it was a great experience. It definitely took longer than the 2 work days they mention to get my project evaluated and approved (took about a month), so I did forget about it and when I saw it being approved I honestly didn’t think it was going anywhere.

As part of my mindfulness and minimalism journey, I like to meditate on how can I improve my focus, simplifying and reducing things that I might enjoy, but that have a bigger cost (which can be measured in time, money, happiness or a combination of them).

Turns out for me, selling apps on the App Store is one of those things.

I considered just simply to stop selling them but it didn’t feel entirely right, with 10k+ customers between 6 apps (most on Oikon and Oikon 2, for iOS and macOS) who paid for their apps just suddenly not getting any more access to them when I wasn’t really losing money.

When I saw Transferslot I thought it could be an easy way to let go of that commitment while giving those customers something better (a dedicated team and actual plans for the future).

After getting my project approved there I had a couple of potential buyers interested reaching out, and after showing them some real stats from iTunes Connect and answering a few questions, I had two offers. I finally completed the sale within 2 weeks of the project being approved.

Emptying my Github profile

Part of the deal was to transfer my 14 Github repos with public code related to the 6 apps in the App Store (the iOS, macOS, Zapier, and Web versions, plus websites), and the license rights to do whatever they wanted with the code.

I definitely felt like I was losing something, seeing so much code “go away” and making my Github profile weaker (with less code variety, and less “new tech” like React, React Native, and Electron). I only had to remember those are just “fake internet points”, that it doesn’t really matter, to have that feeling dissipate.